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New Super Nintendo Game 'Nightmare Busters' Isn't Exactly New [Updated]

Nightmare Busters isn’t exactly a new game, though it’s being billed as such hither and thither.

The novelty? It’s an SNES game, and there haven’t been any “new” Super Nintendo games in 15 years (though I suspect that figure may not take into account the indie development scene.)

The thing is Nightmare Busters was already very much a game planned for release on the SNES but for one reason or another publisher Nichibutzu dropped the title and it was never released.

Super Fight Team, the company behind the release of the game, has partnered with the game’s original developers to release the game on SNES with a fully modern $60+ price-tag.

[EDIT: I have removed a link to an emulator that runs this game. In the original post I mentioned that it has been available for free via emulators for some time. At the time of writing, I did not even consider that emulating a previously unreleased game could even be considered piracy. My apologies to anyone who feels otherwise. The point of this was simply to illustrate that (as the title of this post illustrates) the game is not new, and it has been played by people online for some time.]

It’s also hard to tell from the tiny screenshots on the game’s webpage whether or not the graphics have been retooled. It certainly looks like they have, but it could just as easily be that the smaller images simply look crisper than the emulator.

Here’s some video (taken several years ago) of the gameplay.

Update:

I want to make it very clear that I in no way support or advocate piracy. To be quite honest, I assumed that a game like this was on an emulator precisely because it was never released. Since it was never released, I assumed that there was some process that its creators must have gone through to license it out to the websites that hosted it, especially since the one I visited apparently charges a subscription fee after you’ve tried a game a few times.

Either way, my actual intention with this post was to show simply that the game wasn’t new, and that in fact people had been playing it via emulators for some time even though it never was released for the SNES. By all means, if you are someone who owns that old, out-of-production system, I recommend you pay for the game if you want to play it. But up until its release, the only way anyone has ever even tried this game was via emulation.

In other words, I am not advocating “stealing” if something is too expensive. That is not my point, and I think only a very uncharitable reading of this post can come to that conclusion.

I would just add that people who have played this game with an emulator, which is not a very good gaming experience, might be the most likely to purchase it for their SNES. I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think anyone is guilty of “stealing” when the only way this game was ever available was in this format. Maybe it is unethical to play it this way now since it will be available, though I’m not sure how many people still have Super Nintendos. I hope Super Fight Team sells many, many copies though.

P.S. Does anyone know the law in regards to IPs like this, that were cancelled and abandoned for decades? In other words, was it at one point legal to play via an emulator but now it is no longer legal? As I said, I’m unclear on the laws surrounding emulators in the fist place, but even more so with regards to abandoned software.

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You can find plenty of sportwriters who will tell you that taking PEDs – something that is both illegal and against the rules of the sports they cover – have made sports more interesting, better, and more profitable. Joe Sheehan, for one, Baseball Prospectus’ “Extra Innings” for another.

Can anyone seriously say that the existence of this emulation is actually going to hurt sales of the game? If anything, I would think it will help, as awareness of the game’s existence would otherwise be close to zero.

Regardless of the legality of the ROM (and I haven’t heard definitively one way or the other whether the ROM that’s made it to the public consciousness was released by someone with the authority to do so), the assumption that it’s existence is a hindrance to legitimate sales is just that – an assumption.

Even having said all of that – whether an article is going to help or hurt a company or industry should not be a consideration (assuming that it’s not libel or slander). That’s the problem I had with Kevin’s comment.

First let me just say that I don’t give two shits about this game, looks crap, but I think the author should be a little more professional.

- “The game was never released. Sheesh people.” It is now, it’s released in 2013 like any other 2013 game and the platform is irrelevant in all honesty, so suggesting people play it on an emulator to save $60 is inappropriate no matter what anyone thinks.

- “Do you own a Super Nintendo? Do you think many people do?” SNES sold 50 million. You can’t buy a SNES and some people may not have an SNES, in which case I don’t understand why they would want this game in the first place, for those, I suggest buying the game then emulating the game, not just pirating to save $60 as you suggested.

That would have been more responsible, and less of a “hurr durr pirate because it’s cheaper”.

Well this article is certainly disgusting. I wish I hadn’t given it the click, but whatever.

I can’t believe that Forbes would be allowing content that advocated piracy. This is no different than saying that you should be downloading movies instead of buying the DVD because it’s cheaper and easy to do.

And that DVD analogy is so uninspired I can’t help but roll my eyes. He simply pointed out” Hey this game just came out for SNES for 60 bucks, even though you could already have played it online for several years now” That’s it, he didn’t say don’t buy it, and I doubt anybody that really wanted this SNES game from the 90′s would have actually changed their mind.

I understand what you mean about giving terrible things clicks because I feel that way every time I accidentally visit Kotaku. Sometimes I pull out the hose and just blast my computer with a steady stream of water to wash away the taint of that.

Also I’m not surprised you’d be surprised by anything that Forbes may do considering you’ve never read a damn thing here before. I’m surprised you can handle a site that isn’t comprised of nothing but pop up pictures only.

I am truly surprised to see content from Forbes advocating illegal activity. We can have a long, reasoned discussion about the pros and cons of a game designed for the SNES being finally released for modern systems with a $60 price tag, but that bypasses the fact that this article advocates making use of an illegal copy of that game instead of paying for the game. The arguments I have seen in the comment section thus far defending this action barely rise above “I can get it for free so why should I pay for it.” So please Mr. Kain, explain to your audience what makes your use of an emulator not an act of piracy.

Dude, the thing is that your lack of familiarity with US copyright law as it pertains to unreleased works aside, you were advocating that people go out and download a game that is NOW for sale. That little update doesn’t do much of anything to retroactively change that or somehow make it okay for you to have done.

And look, if you’re looking to smooth things over with your critics it may be a good idea to stow the passive-aggressive condescension.

I find this interesting, and wonder if this whole controversy could have been avoided if the people releasing this game had done so through more traditional digital download methods (I find it a little odd that I thought of digital as more traditional than physical copies of the game). They could have offered the cartridge as a collectible bonus, at a much more reasonable price. 60 is too much for a 10+ year old game, $10 or $20 sounds more reasonable (to the consumer, perhaps manufacturing costs are higher, but I don’t know about that).

Funny thing is I’m sure there’s people posting here who have emulators and whole libraries of games on their computers right now, but are just looking for a way to find something to complain about the one person who doesn’t suck up to the gaming companies in the industry.